In light of the impass we seem to be at with regard to contributing to the SVN, I am trying to think of other options. I am very reluctant to fork the code as I don't see much long term benefit from fragmenting such a small community.

As a compromise, I have been considering kanato's idea of creating an off-site mirror/branch for us to contribute to. Ideally, we could submit a unified patch to Fiddler at various intervals.
The down side to me seems that you won't get the proper credit for your commits and that Fiddler might find it more difficult to merge the code. If anyone has a better idea, please speak up.

I can set up this mirror. Would any of you be interested in contributing?

kanato, I'd really like to work with you to get the OS X support debugged/stable.

Comment viewing options

I'm not working with or on OpenTK, but also working on cross-platform gaming in .NET, so call me an interested bystander that wants this project to be a success. On the practical side of this you could also try a distributed VCS like svk or git to work with eachother, while importing and merging the main branch, publishing a patch once in a while as release. I've also been messing around previously with mirroring SVN repositories, so I can help setup some mirrored repository where you can create your own branches if you'd like. But the best way ofcourse it just to have some branches in the main repository for contributors, after all that's what they're for.

Well I've tried to contact Fiddler, but no reply yet. If your goal is to get OSX support working and debugged, I'd recommend just mirroring OpenTK and do it. Neither Fiddler nor me have that OS and you can be certain that the work is not in vain. OpenAL should behave pretty cooperative, getting input working is probably the hardest part.
Touching anything else I would not recommend without checking back first, because the API isn't locked down yet and changes are to be expected.
Hope this helps.

I'd really like to hear what Fiddler has to say on this. We all have lives and quite frankly, I am still holding out hope that we can do this with a branch.

FWIW, I was watching this video last night ( http://sites.google.com/site/io/how-open-source-projects-survive-poisono... ). I really think we all could learn something from it. We are really a tiny community. I think we need each other and we should find an acceptable compromise. I don't have a problem with Fiddler serving as the benign dictator of this project. I'd just like to have a more workable participation model.

I've been staying away from this discussion, mainly as I didn't feel I had anything constructive to offer here. But I do have to say that I agree with Kamujin on this. OpenTK is a great project, thanks to the efforts of Inertia and Fiddler, and it's really important that we build a solid community in order to protect its future.

It's obviously a big decision, and if 0.9.2 is coming soon, as Inertia says, then now might not be best time to make that change. But I think it's something that should be considered for future revisions.

If it's not too bold, could I suggest that we agree to wait for a specific length of time, to see if we get any response from the Fiddler? If we don't receive a response at all in that time, then in order to save the project, others among this community might want to discuss taking the project into their own hands.

I don't mean to suggest that anyone 'steal' it (for want of a better word), but it would be a great shame to see development on such a well-programmed library cease altogether if the Fiddler has become unable to continue working on it and is unable to contribute on these forums.

We could agree to wait another 2 weeks (for example) for any sign of communication from the Fiddler (email, personal message or forum post). If nobody has heard anything from the Fiddler by the end of that 2 weeks, we might then assume that the Fiddler has become unavailable and then seriously discuss setting up a mirror.

I think a plan of action (or even of action that's been patiently delayed from a predetermined length of time) would put everyone's minds at rest. I know it's already been a few weeks, but I'm thinking it would be respectful to publicly announce a sort of deadline and then to honour it before taking things further.

All of the above: just a suggestion. Three weeks would be a good length of time for a sunny vacation in the Bahamas, right? I wouldn't be thinking too hard about any pet coding projects if I was lying in the shade of a palm tree, drinking Pina Coladas from coconut shells. ;-)

The most recent post I see of Fiddler's is Sept. 26. The subversion hasn't had a commit from him since Sept. 19.

I initially was encouraged to work on OSX support back in March when I first posted about it. His last post on the topic was in July, when he said "I'll commit it tomorrow" after I submitted a patch. But that never happened and I never received feedback on why. It's confusing to be initially encouraged to write the code and then have it (apparently) ignored when submitted. If there's a problem with the submission, tell me and I'll work on fixing it. I'm not going to continue to work on it unless I have a version control system at my disposal. I don't know if it's actually been ignored, but it feels like it has been.

I don't mean to be rude or disrespectful towards you, Inertia, but your speculation on why Fiddler might not respond is not really reassuring when he could just pop in and say something like "Guys I've been real busy and I want to wait until after 0.9.2 is released before dealing with patches."

@ Entropy: I think your suggestion is a good one. Maybe it would make sense to wait as long as, say, the weekend after Thanksgiving (American holiday on Nov. 27th). I don't know about the others but I won't have much time to work on anything in the two weeks before that. That's like 5 weeks from now.

@ Kamujin: That video was very interesting, and it has changed the way I think about a few things that are done in some of my other projects. Thanks for sharing it!